North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Email peering

  • From: Michael.Dillon
  • Date: Fri Jun 17 05:45:41 2005

> Similar concept, same scaling problems; it just hides the explicit 
routing
> from the user (as would any modern "peering" system, presumably).

Then you are presuming wrongly. Nowhere in what I wrote have
I suggested any changes in the existing email technology. I am
not suggesting that we drop SMTP in favour of your favourite
old dusty protocol. I am suggesting that we need a system of
accountability for people who run Internet email servers based
on contracts and SLAs, i.e. peering agreements.

I haven't specified how it would be implemented because I expect
that the companies negotiating such agreements would specify this
in some kind of operational best-practices document.

One way that it COULD be implemented is for people accepting
incoming email on port 25 to check a whitelist before accepting
email. Only operators who have signed a peering agreement would
be on the whitelist. Presumably, the whitelist would be served
up by your regional association and they would have some means 
of relaying queries (or synchronizing their database) with the
other 4 regions. 

Let's face it, people have described a lot of best practices
for running SMTP based email services but there has never
been a concerted effort to implement these in some methodical
way. It has always been a case of preaching to the converted
at NANOG or on some lists. And it just does not scale!

--Michael Dillon